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COFXRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



THE ATTRACTIONS OF THE MINISTRY 



THE ATTRACTIONS 
OF THE MINISTRY 



by James H. Snowden 

Professor of Systematic Theology in the 

Western Theological Seminary 

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. 




Philadelphia 

The Westminster Press 

1921 






^^ 



Copyright, 1921 
By F. M. Braselman 



NOV -3 1921 



0)C!.A630155 



TABLE OF CONTENTS 

PAGE 

I. Motives Which Do Not Apply to the Min- 
istry 15 

1. Not a Money-Making' Business 15 

2. Not a Place in Which to Gratify Ambition 20 

3. Not Easy Work 22 

II. General Attractions of the Ministry 29 

1. Based on Truth 29 

2. Based on Right 30 

3. A Useful Work 31 

4. An Unselfish Work 33 

5. A Permanent Calling 35 

6. A Great Work 37 

III. Specific Attractions of the Ministry 43 

1. A Comfortable Living 43 

2. A Fine Social Position 45 

3. An Intellectual Calling 48 

4. A Teaching Vocation 55 

5. A Speaking Vocation 62 

6. A Soul- Winning Vocation 66 

7. Building a Brotherhood 70 

8. The Salvation of Society 76 

9. Establishing the Kingdom of God in the 

World 82 

10. Leadership 85 

11. Heroism 87 

12. A Great Fellowship 91 

13. Coworking with Grod and Christ 94 

14. Great and Fine Rewards 97 

IV. Some Subsidiary Questions 107 

1. What Constitutes a Call to the Ministry? 107 

2. What Preparation is Necessary for a Suc- 

cessful Ministry ? 110 

3. Is There Any Special Call for Ministers 

of Ability To-Day? 114 



I thank Christ Jesus our Lord, who hath enabled me, 

for that he counted me faithful, putting me into the 

ministry. (A. V.) 

— Paul. 

DOCTOR GEORGE F. PENTECOST, who at- 
tained eminence in the ministry both in Englan<l 
and America, and whose death occurred on 
August 7, 1920, at the age of nearly eighty yeai's, when 
in prospect of his eightieth birthday wrote: "Should my 
Lord come to me now and say: ^My son, I have decided 
to put you back into your twenty-second year and give 
you another lifers opportunity. T\Tiat line of service for 
me will you choose — ^merchant, lawyer, doctor, or poli- 
tician f I would say, *My Lord, let me be a minister of 
the gospel or a pastor of thy churches; I know what it 
all means, and I would gladly live the life and do the 
work of the ministry all over again; only give me more 
grace that I may better live my life and do my work.' " 



I glorify my ministry. 

— Paul. 



THE ATTRACTIONS OF THE MINISTRY 

WE are God's fellow-workers." This 
fact dignifies and glorifies all true toil. 
All worthy work is working together with 
God, whether it be done in the home or school, 
field or factory, down in the mine or up on 
the mast, at the plow or in the pulpit. Jeho- 
vah ^^ called by name Bezalel the son of Uri, 
the son of Hur, of the tribe of Judah: . . . 
and . . . filled him with the Spirit of God, in 
wisdom, and in understanding, and in all 
manner of workmanship, to devise skilful 
works, to work in gold, and in silver, and in 
brass, and in cutting of stones for setting, 
and in carving of wood, to work in all 
manner of workmanship." Ex. 31:1-5. The 
analogy of this instance extends the divine 
call to and breathes divine inspiration into 
all artisans and workers engaged in worthy 
service. Whatever contributes to the good 
will and welfare of men manifests the glory 
of God and helps to build his Kingdom in the 

[9] 



THE ATTRACTIONS OF THE MINISTRY 

world. This fact obliterates the distinction 
between the sacred and the secular by turn- 
ing all toil into coworking with God and 
"transfiguring work into worship. This does 
not lower the sacred to the level of the secu- 
lar, but it lifts the secular to the height of the 
sacred and makes all service divine. 

The theory is therefore no longer held, if 
it ever was held, that a young man in order 
to serve the Lord must enter the ministry. 
He may be as divinely called and as truly 
serve the Lord in any other field for which 
he is fitted and into w^hich it is his duty to 
enter. All true workers are thus ^^ God's 
fellow-workers. ' ' 

Nevertheless there are degrees and ranks 
in the fields of service and some of them are 
higher and nobler and are more directly re- 
lated to the Kingdom of God than others; 
and it is still true that in a special sense men 
are called of God to enter the Christian min- 
istry. The prophets and apostles were spe- 
cially endowed for and called to their work, 
and Paul thanked Christ Jesus who '^enabled 

L 10 ] 



THE ATTRACTIONS OF THE MINISTRY 

me, . . . for that he counted me faithful, ap- 
pointing me to his service/' He also de- 
clared, ^^I glorify my ministry," showing 
that he appreciated and emphasized the spe- 
cial honor of a call to the ministry. This 
sense of the special dignity and value of a 
call to this service should not be lost but 
should be intensified in our life. 

It is proper, then, that young men who are 
looking out upon the varied fields of service 
with a view to selecting their life work should 
consider the Christian ministry and decide 
whether there are reasons why they should 
choose this vocation. Such a choice should 
be determined by proper motives, and it is 
the aim of this study to set forth the attrac- 
tions of the ministry as a help to those who 
are facing this decision. 



[11] 



MOTIVES WHICH DO NOT APPLY 
TO THE MINISTRY 



MOTIVES WHICH DO NOT APPLY TO THE 
MINISTRY 

THERE are some motives which may ap- 
peal strongly to young men to enter some 
other fields of service which do not apply to 
the ministry and should be ruled out of the 
decision of this question. 

Not a Money-Making Business 
1. Young men should not enter the min- 
istry to make money. Though this motive 
should always be secondary, yet it is a legiti- 
mate one in considering many other callings. 
Wealth is a necessary condition of social wel- 
fare and it is therefore needful that some 
men should make it and even devote their 
lives to it. But there are other lines of serv- 
ice which are not engaged in the production 
of wealth and offer little pecuniary attrac- 
tion. This is generally true of the teaching 
profession and of philanthropic fields of serv- 

[15] 



THE ATTRACTIONS OF THE MINISTRY 

ice, but it is especially true of the ministry. 
While it is rightly ordained that they that 
preach the gospel shall live of the gospel, yet 
only a plain living is promised and often only 
a meager living is realized. A few ministers 
receive generous and even large salaries, but 
these are exceptional and rare and even these 
salaries are not relatively large and would 
not permit the recipients to accumulate 
wealth. 

If a young man were to enter the ministry 
with a mercenary motive he would not only 
be bitterly disappointed, but he would vitiate 
the very root of his ministry. An English 
art critic has recently lamented the injurious 
effect of the commercial spirit upon art. '^It 
is difficult," he says, ^Ho maintain an ideal 
in a deal." The painter who keeps one eye 
on his canvas and another on the price he 
hopes to get for it is not likely to do good 
work. He is not with a single heart intent 
on producing noble art, but rather on making 
money, and his mercenary spirit will debase 
his artist soul. The same principle applies 

[16] 



MOTIVES WHICH DO NOT APPLY 

in a still greater degree to the ministry. 
Nothing else more surely blights the spirit 
and power of a minister than a keen scent 
for money. His soul is divided between two 
diverse and incongruous things. It would be 
hard to associate with Jesus the idea that he 
was a money-maker. He had not where to 
lay his head, and in sending out the Twelve 
he bade them to go unburdened with any 
money or anxiety about it and charged 
them, ^^ Freely ye received, freely give." No 
thought of charging for the grace of God 
was ever to sully and poison their minds, and 
they were to dispense it without money and 
without price. The retribution that fell upon 
Simon the sorcerer, who wanted to buy the 
gift of the Holy Spirit that he might make 
money out of it, is a grave warning to any 
mercenary minister. 

Not only should the minister not attempt 
to turn his preaching to profit, but he should 
devote himself exclusively to his work and 
not try to mix business with it. If he en- 
deavors to do this he may succeed in making 

[17 I 



THE ATTRACTIONS OF THE MINISTRY 

money, but he is not likely to succeed in sav- 
ing souls. A man may be called to preach 
the gospel, or he may be called to accumulate 
wealth, but he is not called to do both at the 
same time. Peter and Andrew, hearing the 
call of Jesus, ^^straightway . . . left the nets, 
and followed him." Too many ministers 
are still burdened with their old boats and 
tangled up in their old fishing nets. In en- 
tering the ministry we should leave boats and 
nets behind. 

The young man, then, who is bent on mak- 
ing money should not enter the ministry; 
and everyone choosing this calling should re- 
nounce all effort and thought of getting rich, 
and devote himself exclusively to it. How- 
ever, the sacrifice is not a serious deterrent, 
for the loss may be small compared with the 
gain, and this low motive may be submerged 
and lost in higher ones. To the ministry in 
a still greater degree applies the principle 
which Robert Louis Stevenson applied to the 
profession of literature in his ^'Letter to a 
Young Gentleman Who Proposes to Embrace 

[IS] 



I 



MOTIVES WHICH DO NOT APPLY 

the Career of Art ' ' in the following words : 
'^The direct returns — the wages of the trade 
— are small, but the indirect — the wages of 
life — are infinitely great. No other business 
offers a man his daily bread upon such joy- 
ful terms. . . . Suppose it ill paid; the won- 
der is it should be paid at all. Other men 
pay, and pay dearly, for pleasures less de- 
sirable.'^ 

William James, the eminent psychologist, 
took the same view. At the age of twenty- 
one, in a letter to his mother, he wrote : ' ^ I 
feel very much the importance of making 
soon a final choice of my business in life. I 
stand now at the place where the road forks. 
One branch leads to material comfort, the 
fleshpots, but it seems a kind of selling of 
one's soul. The other to mental dignity and 
independence, combined, however, with phys- 
ical penury. ... I fear there might be some 
anguish in looking back from the pinnacle of 
prosperity (necessarily reached, if not by 
eating dirt, at least by renouncing some di- 
vine ambrosia) over the life you might have 

[19] 



THE ATTRACTIONS OF THE MINISTRY 

led in the pure pursuit of truth. It seems as 
if one could not afford to give that up for 
any bribe, however great." 

These considerations that were decisive 
with these eminent literary men should ap- 
peal to young men contemplating the min- 
istry as one of its attractions. 

Not a Place i^ Which to Gkatify Ambition 

2. In the same line, the ministry is not a 
place in which to gratify the ambition for 
position and fame. It is true that there are 
prizes of this kind in this field. Some pulpits 
are strategic points of national and even in- 
ternational publicity and influence and aif ord 
a man of commanding ability and genius a 
conspicuous and splendid position and oppor- 
tunity as a religious and social leader and 
platform orator ; and in every age there have 
been great preachers who have won brilliant 
fame and even lasting renown. It is right, 
also, that a minister should endeavor to de- 
velop his powers to their utmost and fill his 
field with the largest measure of efficiency and 

[20] 



MOTIVES WHICH DO NOT APPLY 

influence. It is as much his duty as it is of 
any other man to make the most of himself 
and of his opportunities. Inevitably also his 
eye will sweep his horizon and he will be at- 
tracted to positions of the highest usefulness. 
Yet all this is to be sharply discriminated 
and kept free from the worldly ambition to 
seek a high place as a means of personal ag- 
grandizement and gratification. When the 
ambition to reach position and power be- 
comes the dominant motive of a minister, it 
not only tempts him to use improper means 
to this end, but it is also so inconsistent with 
the true calling and spirit of the ministry 
that it will blight it at the root. ' ' No man, ' ' 
says Dr. James Denny, ^^can give the impres- 
sion that he himself is clever and also that 
Christ is mighty to save.'^ He may do one 
or the other, but he cannot do both at the 
same time because the two things are mutu- 
ally incompatible. The minister of Jesus 
Christ like his Master comes not to be ^^min- 
istered unto, but to minister" and he should 
forget himself in his mission and his message. 

[21] 



THE ATTRACTIONS OF THE MINISTRY 

Like John the Baptist he should be only a 
voice proclaiming him the latchet of whose 
shoes he is not worthy to unloose. If posi- 
tion and influence come to him, he should wel- 
come them, but only as a means of further 
service. The way to get an influential place 
in the ministry is to forget it, and let it come, 
if it will, of its own accord, not sought, but 
seeking him who by faithful service has 
shown his fitness for it. 

Not Easy Woek 

3. A third motive that should not attract 
anyone into the ministry is the desire for a 
soft place and easy work. This is not a very 
worthy motive for entering any field of serv- 
ice, but it does appeal to and draws many 
young men into various callings. The lure of 
' ' the white collar ' ' has an attraction for many 
who are crowding into clerkships where they 
can dress like gentlemen and have unsoiled 
hands, but where they may also doom them- 
selves to ill-paid work all their lives. 

The ministry looks like a ^^soft snap" and 

[22] 



MOTIVES WHICH DO NOT APPLY 

an easy and almost idle life, as it may seem 
to an onlooker to be coddled in comfort, flat- 
tered by admiring parishioners, and fanned 
with perfumed air by adorers of the gentler 
and more sentimental sex. ^^Pat," said one 
Irish hodcarrier to another, ' ' if you had your 
choice, what would you be f '' Well, Mike, ' ' 
said Pat, '^I believe for a nice, clean, easy 
job, I would choose to be a bishop.'' A good 
many think the way of Pat, and some young 
men may be cherishing this delusion. For a 
delusion it certainly is that will surely work 
its own disillusionment and revenge. 

While the ministry has its pleasant fea- 
tures and comfortable aspects, yet it is verily 
a strenuous life. It knows nothing of short 
hours and scarcely has a rest day, as it is 
subject to calls and service the week through 
and at almost any hour of the day or night. 
It puts a severe strain and tax on all a man's 
powers, physical, mental, and emotional ; and 
it is burdened with responsibilities and anx- 
ieties that are exhausting to the nervous sys- 
tem and trying to the soul. Whoever is hunt- 

[23] 



THE ATTRACTIONS OF THE MINISTRY 

ing a soft place and easy work had better 
give the ministry a wide berth. 

Closely akin to this view is the notion that 
the ministry is easy in that it does not call for 
ability equal to that demanded by business 
and other professions. Tradition ascribes to 
parents the disposition to direct their ablest 
sons into the law and medicine and business 
and send their least competent son into the 
mimstry. It is doubtful whether this was 
ever consciously done, and the average abil- 
ity of ministers compared with that of other 
professions does not lend confirmation or 
color to such a practice. But any such view 
is without the shadow of foundation and 
would quickly disprove itself if it were tried. 
The ministry is as exacting in its demands 
for ability as any other calling and is as suc- 
cessful in attracting able men as other fields. 
The task of the modern minister is growing 
increasingly difficult and instead of lowering 
is raising its standard of service. To use a 
current phrase, the ministry is *^a man's 
job,'' and only strong men should enter it. 

[24] 



MOTIVES \^ HIGH DO ^OT APPLY 



It is already evident that the ministry is 
not all roses and rainbows and has its thorns 
and dark days like other callings. There are 
others of these apparently deterrent features 
of the ministry, such as the uncertain tenure 
of the pastorate, the meager support that is 
often given to it, the exacting and unreason- 
able people that it must try to please and 
satisfy, the petty faultfinding and unjust and 
unkind criticism that it is subject to, the 
many irritations and annoyances that it must 
bear, and so on. Paul desired the brethren 
to pray for him that he might be delivered 
from '^unreasonable . . . men,'^ and this 
tribe has not yet all passed out of the world 
and church, and the modem minister is still 
plagued with his share of them. There are 
unpleasant and trying aspects of the min- 
istry and it is right that they should be pre- 
sented along with its attractions and even 
painted in their darkest colors. 

If any young man can be turned back by 
such discouragements it would appear that 
he is not made of the right stuff for this call- 

[25] 



THE ATTRACTIONS OF THE MINISTRY 

ing and had better not go on. Gideon sifted 
out his men until he had only three hundred 
brave and stalwart soldiers, but with them 
he won a signal victory. The ministry wants 
sifted men of tried souls and true who are 
not afraid of an enemy and a hard fight. 
Every field of labor has its hardships and 
discouragements, and if a young man is try- 
ing to escape these things and wants to be 
carried on flowery beds of ease, he will not 
find work to suit him anywhere in this world. 
The ministry is a strenuous life calling for 
men of ability and virility and of whole- 
hearted consecration, and the avaricious man, 
the ambitious man, and the lazy or incom- 
petent man had better keep out of it. Its call 
is for ''a, good soldier of Christ Jesus/ ^ 



[26] 



n 



GENERAL ATTRACTIONS OF THE 
MINISTRY 



II 

GENERAL ATTRACTIONS OF THE MINISTRY 

THERE are some general attractions of 
the ministry which it has in common with 
some other worthy calHngs, which will now 
be considered. 

Based on Truth 

1. The ministry is based on truth. It pro- 
claims the gospel of Him who said, ^^I am the 
truth''; and however the human understand- 
ing and presentation of this truth may be 
mixed with human error, yet his gospel 
stands through the ages as an embodiment 
of the essential truth concerning God and 
man in their mutual relations. Any system 
of teaching and life calling not based on truth 
cannot be a worthy vocation and cannot last 
because it is out of gear with the world and 
refuses to fit into the universe. The stars 
are fighting against it. No young man should 
choose a calling that is not founded on fact, 

[29] 



THE ATTRACTIONS OF THE MINISTRY 

for in so doing he is following a delusion that 
will surely lead to disappointment and fail- 
ure; but in following the Lord Jesus Christ 
he shall not walk in darkness but shall have 
the light of life and will not be afraid to face 
any fact or to come into the light of any truth 
in any field of the universe. 

Based on^ Right 
2. The ministry is based on right. The 
right is that which is straight as the word 
means, as opposed to that which is wrong or 
wrung, for the two forms are only different 
spellings of the same word. Anything that 
is not right is crooked, and again it refuses 
to fit into the facts of reality. The integrity of 
the universe will not tolerate it. No crooked 
business is respectable, and every such voca- 
tion is doomed, and every young man should 
shun it. But the gospel of Christ is as straight 
as a beam of sunlight and as just as the char- 
acter of God, and no one will ever be ashamed 
of it or fear to have it tested by the highest 
and finest standards of ethical integrity. 

[30] 



GENERAL ATTRACTIONS OF THE MINISTRY 

A Useful Work 

3. The ministry is good or useful. This 
is another standard by which we evaluate the 
worth of things. Any thought or deed that 
is not good is evil and is a seed of decay and 
death. Any business that is not useful is 
worthless and wasteful and is likely to be 
wicked. The liquor traffic fell under con- 
demnation on the ground of its being a vast 
waste and damage to society, and so it had 
to go. There are still other businesses, such 
as gambling, that are wholly harmful and 
contain no atom of good. Young men in 
choosing a calling should test it by this stand- 
ard, and if it fulfills no useful end, if it ren- 
ders no worthy service in the world, it is a 
bad business and should be avoided. 

The ministry is good and useful in the 
highest sense and degree, as it preaches and 
applies the gospel that is profitable for all 
things and has in it the promise of the life 
that now is as well as of that which is to 
come. It is ever the higher that lifts the 
lower, the soul that transforms and transfig- 



THE ATTRACTIONS OF THE MINISTRY 

ures the body, and knowledge raises the level 
of all life. Ideas rule the world; science 
secretes civilization. The gospel proclaims 
the most practical and powerful truth in re- 
lation to human welfare, and wherever this 
truth shines there the Avorld is brightest and 
life rises to the highest forms and bears the 
finest fruit. 

Some misguided or prejudiced minds may 
look on the minister as a nonproducer and 
parasite in society, but any such view and 
charge is wholly unfounded and false. The 
thinker is a producer as certainly as the 
farmer and the manufacturer, and the artist 
not less than the artisan. Indeed, it is the 
thinker that fertilizes the world mth preg- 
nant ideas which are the seeds of all our prog- 
ress, without which the world would be a bar- 
ren soil. Newton did not leave any money or 
magic machine to the world, but he left it 
ideas that have enormously increased all its 
wealth. The minister has no cause to fear this 
charge and need not be ashamed to look the 
physical toiler in the face, for he himself is a 

[32] 



GENERAL ATTRACTIONS OF THE MINISTRY 

producer of the richest goods of life and of 
the most essential health and wealth of the 
soul, the very bread of life ; and therefore his 
calling bears upon it the justification of the 
supremely useful and good. 

An Unselfish Work 

4. Again, the ministry is an altruistic or 
unselfish work. All worthy work has in it an 
element of altruism, as it not only ministers 
to the worker but also to the world. A man 
can turn any business, however good, to a 
selfish end as he tries to build it up at the 
expense of other men's interests and devotes 
its profits wholly to his own gratification. 
But any selfish life is at war with funda- 
mental, psychological, and ethical laws and 
will work out its own retribution. 

Even among worthy vocations some are 
primarily gainful occupations. The manu- 
facturer or the merchant has his eye on 
profits and his first thought is for himself, 
though he may also use his means and turn 
his whole business to an altruistic end. But 

[33] 



THE ATTRACTIONS OF THE MINISTRY 

there are callings that in their very nature 
are altruistic and have little regard for per- 
sonal gain. The teacher, the Y. M. C. A. sec- 
retary, the welfare worker, and the philan- 
thropist in any field are not thinking of profit 
for themselves but of service to others. There 
is a growing number of these socialized voca- 
tions in our modern world and they are a 
hopeful sign of ethical and spiritual progress. 
The ministry stands preeminent among these 
altruistic callings. As the Master came ' ' not to 
be ministered unto, but to minister" and took 
a towel and girded himself with it and began 
to wash his disciples' feet, so should all Chris- 
tians and especially ministers follow in his 
steps. The minister's work consists in serv- 
ing the people as he preaches to them in the 
pulpit, visits them in their homes, and per- 
forms all the duties of his office; and in all 
his work he seldom and generally not at all 
has any thought of any kind of gain or re- 
ward in his mind. Service is his daily round 
of work. Other men may wonder that he 
turns away from fields in which he might 

[34] 



GENERAL ATTRACTIONS OF THE MINISTRY 

make a large income and achieve some dis- 
tinction in order that he may do such work, 
but he has meat to eat that they know not of. 
His work therefore is raised to a high level 
of service and sacrifice, nobility and beauty. 
'^Let us not be weary in well-doing," says 
Paul, or in beautiful doing, as the word 
means. Unselfishness adorns any deed with 
beauty, imparting to it a grace more splendid 
than flashing gems. The ministry is devoted 
to such work and it ought to be and often is 
the most beautiful service in the world. 

A Peemaxext Calling 

5. The ministry is a permanent calling. 
Some kinds of work are temporary in their 
nature and, having fulfilled their use, pass 
away. Munition makers reaped a golden har- 
vest during the AVar, but when the AVar 
stopped their work stopped with it. In choos- 
ing a calling young men would do well to con- 
sider this point of permanency. If they fit 
themselves for a kind of work that will pres- 
ently cease to be in demand, they will be out 

[35] 



THE ATTRACTIONS OF THE MINISTRY 

of employment and be left with a kind of skill 
which has cost them much preparation but 
for which they can find no use. 

The ministry is permanent by its nature. 
It is rooted down in the religious nature of 
man, and this is as constitutional and in- 
eradicable and abiding as his mental and 
physical nature and needs. The work of the 
priest is one of the oldest callings in the 
world, being more ancient and universal than 
raising food and weaving cloth for clothes; 
and there is no sign of its becoming obsolete 
in our modern world through a decline in the 
demand for it and the passing of its market. 
Men always have had and always will have 
religious needs which they will demand shall 
be supplied ; and the prophet is the man that 
can meet this necessity. Never was there a 
greater need and a more urgent demand for 
a competent ministry that can satisfy the re- 
ligious needs of men than there is to-day. 
Young men that are thinking of preparing 
for this service need not fear that if they 
enter it they will find that they have chosen 

[36] 



GENERAL ATTRACTIONS OF THE MINISTRY 

a narrowing field and vanishing profession. 
The matter of the particular field is not now 
being considered, but the general need of the 
ministry is rooted in the essential nature of 
man and will last as long as man himself 
lasts in this world. 

A Geeat Work 

6. The ministry is a great work. It is great 
in its subject-matter or ideas which deal with 
God and man and sweep the whole field of 
being, so that as a system of thought, theology 
is a universal science and nothing in the uni- 
verse is foreign or uninteresting to it. It is 
great in its motives as all the interests of 
time and eternity are behind it to give it re- 
sponsibility and urgency. It is great in its 
plan and program, for it proposes a radical 
regeneration of the individual in heart and 
character and life and an equally radical re- 
construction of society in its spirit and order, 
and then it sweeps its circle around the world 
that it may rebuild it into the Kingdom of 
God on earth. 

[37 J 



THE ATTRACTIONS OF THE MINISTRY 

Vocatioiis differ greatly in this point of 
magnitude, and it should have large place and 
weight in choosing a calling in life. A great 
work tends to make us great, and a small 
work tends to make us small. The mind in- 
sensibly expands or contracts to the size of 
•the field it works in. This is the mischief of 
a minute division of labor that tethers a man 
to a small and insignificant mechanical task 
that repeats its endless round of drudgery 
and allows no play of mind in initiative and 
variety. Even to devote one's life to mere 
money making, while it sharpens the acquisi- 
tive wits, may narrow the mind and wither 
the heart. The man that would give his whole 
time and thought to carving heads on cherry 
seeds w^ould presently have a cherry-seed 
head. But a work of great importance and 
responsibility inspires us with a sense of its 
magnitude and calls out our ambition and 
power. When we are shut in, down in a nar- 
row valley or in the confines of a walled in- 
closure, not only is our vision contracted, but 
our whole nature is cramped and tends to 

[38] 



J 



GExNERAL ATTRACTIONS OF THE MINISTRY 

shrink ; but when we climb a mountain it puts 
its giant shoulder under us and lifts us into 
the blue, where we have a vaster dome over 
us and a far-flung horizon around us and a 
splendid and inspiring vision. "While we 
climb the mountain the mountain lifts us and 
imparts to us some of its majesty and mys- 
tery; and it is impossible to stand on the 
summit of a lofty mountain and not swell 
with a new sense of the mystic greatness and 
grandeur of the world and of life. 

Many a person is leading a narrow, shriv- 
eled, morbid life, eating his own heart out, 
because he has no wide outlook and worthy 
objective to take him out of himself and cause 
him to lose his sour self-consciousness and 
be absorbed in a greater and nobler life. Let 
us get out of the low ideas and ideals of a 
self -centered and selfish life and climb some 
great mountain of vision and service. Such 
an elevation of thought and aim will lift us 
out of the ruts and holes of our life and espe- 
cially out of our morbid grievances and our 
mental and physical aches and complaints, 

[39] 



THE ATTRACTIONS OF THE MINISTRY 

which are so largely subjective and will sim- 
ply vanish if we forget them, and will catch 
us up into the inspiration of a great life. 

The ministry is the greatest calling in the 
world from the point of view of great ideas 
and ideals. It is true that a few exceptional 
men, by reason of their genius and great sta- 
tion, the supreme thinker and poet and artist, 
or the great statesman or general, wield a 
power exceeding that of any other class of 
men and cast the shadow of their fame far 
down the centuries. But so also may the 
preacher of great genius command vdde 
power and acquire enduring fame. Yet 
among ordinary men the minister has a work 
that handles the greatest ideas of the human 
mind, that allies him with the best men and 
the greatest souls and with God himself in 
the greatest dream and enterprise of all the 
ages, the rebuilding of the whole world into 
the Kingdom of God. This work will lift a 
minister out of low interests and aims into 
a lofty life that will expand his vision and 
stir his energies and tend to make him great. 

[40] 



Ill 

SPECIFIC ATTRACTIONS OF THE 
MINISTRY 



Ill 

SPECIFIC ATTRACTIONS OF THE MINISTRY 

THERE are some attractions that spe- 
cially belong to or inhere in the ministry 
that will now be mentioned. 

A Comfortable Living 
1. The ministry is assured of a comfort- 
able living. This statement may elicit some 
surprise as not being in accordance with 
popular understanding and the personal and 
painful experience of many ministers. Is not 
the ministry notoriously one of the most 
poorly paid callings in the modern world? 
Do not even day laborers receive more? 
Some common laborers under the exceptional 
circumstances of the War did receive more 
than the average minister, but this was only 
a temporary condition. 

The average salary of all ministers is dis- 
tressingly low, but for the better educated 
ministry required by the leading denomina- 

[43] 



THE ATTRACTIONS OF THE MINISTRY 

tions the average is higher and compares 
favorably with the teaching profession gen- 
erally. The writer does not maintain, how- 
ever, that the ministry is a profitable or 
money-making vocation compared with some 
other professions and with business. On the 
contrary, he has already denied this point 
and emphasized the denial. 

Yet it remains true that the minister of 
the gospel does and must live of the gospel 
in accordance with New Testament teaching. 
This living is also on an average scale of 
comfort. Ministers generally receive a salary 
that is on a level with the average income of 
their people, neither being pressed down to 
the poverty of the poorest nor raised to the 
aflBuence of the richest members of their con- 
gregations. This salary usually enables a 
minister to support his family comfortably 
and to educate his children properly. 

The minister can also depend on his salary 
with a degree of assurance that is not en- 
joyed by all other professional classes. Be- 
ginners in other professions, such as law and 

[44] 



SPECIFIC ATTRACTIONS OF THE MINISTRY 

medicine, must usually pass through a period 
of meager earnings and j^recarious subsist- 
ence while becoming established in their pro- 
fessions and fields, whereas the young min- 
ister generally starts off with a sufficient 
assured income. 

Ministers' salaries have been far too low, 
owing to the great rise in prices, but there is 
now a general movement to raise them. It 
is also true in the ministry, as in other call- 
ings, that superior ability and increased ef- 
ficiency sooner or later bring higher remu- 
neration. 

While no one should enter the ministry 
wholly or mainly because of this attraction, 
yet the fact that this calling offers an assured 
income and fair living from the start is a 
subordinate inducement which a young man 
in contemplating the ministry has a right to 
take into account. 

A Fine Social Positioit 

2. The minister enjoys a fine social posi- 
tion. Again this fact is only mentioned with- 

[45] 



THE ATTRACTIONS OF THE MINISTRY 

out unduly stressing it as one of the subordi- 
nate attractions of this calling. The minister, 
by reason of his ability and education and 
especially of his position as a preacher and 
pastor, at once steps into the esteem of his 
people and is accorded a respected and influ- 
ential place in the community. Due deference 
is paid to his person and opinions, character 
and dignity, by all classes, and he and his 
family are the recipients of social attentions 
and favors that are as enjoyable as they are 
honorable. Often he is the most conspicuous 
and influential man in his community or city. 
It is true that a minister is no longer re- 
garded as a sacrosanct being and paid almost 
divine honors on the ground of his sacred 
calling. That kind of fictitious dignity and 
divinity is gone, and it is well that it is so. 
The minister is now judged as a man among 
men, and if he is unworthy of respect he will 
soon forfeit it and be stripped of the honor 
that attaches to his office. If a minister is 
not a genuine gentleman, he will soon be 
found out and no artificial veneer and polish 

[46] 



SPECIFIC ATTRACTIONS OF THE MINISTRY 

will save him in the hour of his exposure. 
No longer will ^'the cloth" cover and hide 
unworthy ministerial character and conduct. 
Nevertheless the minister starts with all 
things in his favor, with the public presump- 
tion that he is a scholar and gentleman and 
man of pure character worthy of all respect 
and honor. This honor will be freely ac- 
corded him, and unless he justly forfeits it, 
he will keep it and grow in social esteem and 
public influence. 

Let no one jeeringly say that Peter and 
Paul and other great preachers never once 
thought of such things as a comfortable liv- 
ing and a fine social position, but counted all 
worldly considerations but loss and did not 
even count their lives dear that they might 
preach the gospel. This was their call to 
service and sacrifice in their exceptional day 
and circumstances, and nobly did they re- 
spond to it; and did such critical circum- 
stances and dangers confront them, ministers 
would meet them with equal consecration and 
heroism to-day. But the case is different 

[47] 



THE ATTRACTIONS OF THE MINISTRY 

with the normal call that now comes to our 
young men, and it is proper that these sec- 
ondary considerations, while being kept in 
due subordination, should yet be taken into 
account and permitted to add their attrac- 
tions to the ministry. 

Aisr I:srTELLECTUAL Calling 

3. The ministry has the attraction of being 
an intellectual calling. By the very nature 
and requirement of his work the minister is 
a scholar and student, with a trained and 
richly stored mind. He goes through a long- 
course of education, passing through common 
school, high school, college, and theological 
seminary, so that he enters upon his work as 
a disciplined thinker with a large stock of 
knowledge. But his education, so far from 
being finished at graduation, runs on in a 
broadening and deepening stream through all 
his work and life. 

His primary study is the Bible, together 
with general religious literature, and into 
this unique and supreme Book he ever digs 

[48] 



SPECIFIC ATTRACTIONS OF THE MINISTRY 

deeper, studying its languages and history 
and customs and teachings and assimilating 
its ideas and spirit. This is in itself a con- 
stant education, as the Bible is a mass of the 
finest and richest literature in the world. 
These prophets and poets and apostles were 
men of religious genius who were sensitive 
to every breath of the Spirit, lofty mountain 
peaks that early caught the light of God's 
face and reflected it down upon their fellow 
men. To live in their companionship and 
learn to see their visions and throb with their 
aspirations is a high privilege and inspira- 
tion. The most purely distilled and highly 
spiritualized and supremely precious heart 
blood of the race has been poured into these 
pages, and the minister by constant study and 
meditation absorbs it into his own soul. 

But the minister is a student of no single 
book, though that book be as profound and 
inexhaustible as the Bible. He is a universal 
student, a citizen of the whole world of knowl- 
edge. Theology, like philosophy, is a uni- 
versal science, exploring all fields and rifling 

[49] 



THE ATTRACTIONS OF THE MINISTRY 

them of their infinitely varied treasures and 
making them all its own. God is in all things, 
and all things run up to God for their final 
completion and explanation ; and so all things 
reveal something of his wisdom and will. 
Every common bush is afire with God, every 
fact has diamond-like facets that reflect his 
light and glory. All things, from the center 
to the outmost circumference of the universe, 
are related and bound together in a system 
of perfect harmony and exquisite sympathy, 
so that invisible motes and mighty systems, 
sorrowing souls and starry constellations 
work together for good. Any fact in any 
quarter of the universe is a thread that will 
unravel its whole web, for it exemplifies some 
principle or truth that runs to its center and 
wraps itself around God. 

The minister, along with the philosopher 
and the poet, should be a man of insight and 
imagination to see this unity of all things. 
He should know that 

"No liiy-muffled hum of summer bee, 
But finds some coupling with the spinning stars ; 
[50] 



SPECIFIC ATTRACTIONS OF THE MINISTRY 

No pebble at your feet but proves a sphere; 
No chaffinch but implies the cherubim." 

And he should 

^'See that each blade of grass 
Has roots that grope about eternity, 
And see in each drop of dew upon each blade 
A mirror of the inseparable All." 

The minister, therefore, perhaps more than 
any other professional man, should send out 
a decree that all the world shall be taxed to 
furnish him with materials for his sermons. 
All sciences, astronomy, geology, chemistry, 
biology, psychology, sociology, physics, and 
metaphysics, bring grist to his mill. No fact, 
however remote and unrelated it may seem, 
is really foreign to him, but may yield un- 
expected confirmation and illustration to his 
theme. Literature and poetry and art are 
especially rich mines of truth for him. He 
stands in his watchtower and surveys the 
whole field of human history and learning 
and progress and makes it subservient to his 
ends. He returns from all his studies, as a 
bee from many flowers which it has rifled of 

[51] 



THE ATTRACTIONS OF THE MINISTRY 

their sweets, laden with golden treasure. All 
the streams of his growing knowledge pour 
into the reservoir of his mind from which he 
draws his sermons. This raw material goes 
into his mind as the coal and coke and ore 
go into the top of the blast furnace in due 
time to gush out at the bottom in a molten 
stream of metal. All that a minister reads 
and sees and experiences sooner or later will 
enter into his sermons, weaving threads into 
their webs or flashing out in them as jewels 
of illustration. 

Every sermon springs out of the whole life 
of the man that preaches it. As every seed 
draws on the soil and the shower and the 
sun so that it takes the whole solar system 
to make a single grain of wheat or blade of 
grass, so every sermon sinks its roots down 
through all the years of the preacher and is 
the outgrowth of his total experience. Or as 
a river is composed of drops that have fallen 
out of the sky over many thousands of square 
miles, so a preacher's sermon is composed of 
multitudinous drops that have been distilled 

[52] 



I 



SPECIFIC ATTRACTIONS OF THE MINISTRY 

out of his entire life. Henry Ward Beeclier 
was right when he said it took him forty years 
to make a certain sermon, though he spent 
only a few hours on its special preparation. 
Euskin said that he would use the Devil him- 
self, if he could catch him, for black pigment ; 
and so the preacher can use everything, how- 
ever unrelated and unpromising it may seem, 
in his sermons ; for every sermon he preaches 
will be the precipitate of his personality, the 
outgrowth and harvest of his whole experi- 
ence. Hence the importance to the minister 
of that broader culture out of which good 
sermons can grow. A barren soil is sure to 
raise poor sermons. A small man cannot 
preach a big sermon because he does not have 
the breadth and depth of experience out of 
which a great sermon can come. 

The preacher, then, must have a full mind 
to furnish him with abundant and varied ma- 
terial, and a logical mind to digest it and im- 
agination to illuminate it. Such a mind is the 
secret and source of endless fertility and 
variety in sermons, and the only way a min- 

[53] 



THE ATTRACTIONS OF THE MINISTRY 

ister can have such a mind is to keep filling- 
it up in constant study. A preacher should 
never be a mere pipe tapping other men's 
reservoirs and draining off the distilled es- 
sence of their thinking, but he should have 
within himself an original spring of ideas 
ever welling up and brimming over in peren- 
nial fullness and sparkling freshness. Such 
a preacher will never run dry and his ser- 
mons never grow stale. 

Now the acquisition of truth for its own 
sake is one of the highest occupations and 
noblest pleasures of the human mind. Truth 
is the natural sustenance and exhilarating 
wdne of the mind, eliciting and developing 
all its faculties and interests and luring them 
on into ever larger fields and fuller and finer 
satisfactions. The pursuit of knowledge is a 
quest attended with ever fresh variety and 
picturesqueness, adventure and surprise, and 
wonder akin to worship. It constantly opens 
up new horizons and ushers us into an ever 
vaster world. It pays its own way at every 
step and is its own pure and satisfying re- 

[51] 



SPECIFIC ATTRACTIONS OF THE MINISTRY 

ward. It enlarges and ennobles the soul and 
enormously increases its wisdom and wealth 
as it possesses and grows into mystic unity 
with the world, so that we can say: All 
things are ours, whether Paul, or Apollos, or 
Cephas, or Plato, or Shakspere, or Tenny- 
son, or the world, or life, or death, or things 
present, or things to come, all are ours, and 
we are ^^ owners of the sphere, the seven 
stars, and the solar year/' 

It was of such pursuit and possession that 
Stevenson said that ^^ Other men pay, and 
pay dearly, for pleasures less desirable,'' 
and James said that ^^It seems as if one 
could not afford to give that up for any bribe, 
however great." The minister enjoys this 
privilege and pleasure of intellectual pursuit 
in a rare degree and it is one of the finest 
attractions of the ministry. 

A Teaching Vocation 

4. The ministry has the attraction of being 
a teaching vocation. One may pursue knowl- 
edge as a mere end in itself and as a personal 

[55] 



THE ATTRACTIONS OF THE MINISTRY 

and even selfish enjoyment. Scholarly men 
of wealth and leisure may devote themselves 
to the gratification of their literary tastes in 
a spirit of detachment and aloofness from 
any practical use and service. The minister, 
however, while enjoying the pursuit of knowl- 
edge as an intellectual life, also acquires it 
as a means to a higher end. He is a teacher 
and he gets it that he may give it. Every 
sermon is instruction and he is constantly 
imparting to his people the knowledge he 
has gained in all his studies. 

Such use of knowledge, like mercy, is twice 
blessed: ^^It blesseth him that gives and him 
that takes.'' Giving knowledge is one of the 
most effective ways of getting it. When we 
transfer to another any material possession 
we have that much less left. But this is not 
true of mental possessions : when we impart 
truth to another we do not have less in our 
own minds but more; for the act of impart- 
ing truth to other minds clarifies and inten- 
sifies, broadens and deepens it in our own 
mind. We do not know a thing clearly and 

[ 56 ] 



SPECIFIC ATTRACTIONS OF THE MINISTRY 

firmly until we tell it ; for the very act of tell- 
ing it requires us to cast it in the sharp molds 
of definite words and this clears it of con- 
fusion and vagueness and gives it clean-cut 
outlines and edges. We do not really know 
more than we can say. An Armenian student 
m one of our theological seminaries, who was 
slow in the use of English, had a habit of say- 
ing in answer to a question, ^^ Professor, I 
have that in my mind, but I cannot express 
it." One day the question was, '^What is a 
vacuum?" and after meditating a moment he 
answered, ^^ Professor, I have that in my 
mind, but I cannot express it." When we 
think that we have an idea which we can- 
not express, we probably have a vacuum in 
the very place where the idea is supposed 
to be. 

Because the teacher is constantly forced to 
explain himself in definite and clear terms he 
is learning more than anyone else and is the 
best scholar in the class. Every time he goes 
over a lesson, however often he may have 
done so and however familiar it may be to 

[57] 



THE ATTRACTIONS OF THE MINISTRY 

him, yet lie understands it better, gains some 
new insight into it, and catches some new 
angle or analogy of its truth. New mental 
associations cluster around it, or new illus- 
trations flash their light upon it, and thus he 
sees it more clearly and feels it more deeply 
and his mind grows and glows with the new 
experience. 

The minister in teaching others is also 
teaching himself and gaining broader views 
and fresh illustrations and deeper convic- 
tions in the very act of preaching. Every 
preacher knows how his own sermon while in 
process of delivery reacts upon his mind so 
as to vitalize and fertilize it and cause it to 
sprout and bloom with thoughts and emotions 
that may be a surprise and wonder to himself. 
The pulpit may thus be an anvil on which he 
forges his thoughts at white heat into new 
and finer shapes ; or it may be a glowing fur- 
nace in which the materials in his mind are 
fused into unity and sent out in molten 
streams of thought and emotion. Ministers 
often feel, after delivering a sermon the first 

[58] 



SPECIFIC ATTRACTIONS OF THE MINISTRY 

time, that they can make a much better ser- 
mon of it the next time: the reason is that 
by imparting its truth they have gained a 
better understanding of it and the next time 
they can pour into it their fresh experience. 
^\^lile teaching others they have taught them- 
selves. The minister enjoys this privilege 
and means of growth in personality and 
power in a high degree, and it is one of the 
attractions of his calling. 

But teaching is also a privilege and joy in 
that it imparts truth to other minds and 
thereby contributes to their growth. It is in- 
teresting to see anything grow and it is a joy 
to have a part in cultivating and stimulating 
its growth. How wonderful is the process by 
which a tiny seed becomes a blooming plant 
or a strong oak or a giant redwood pushing 
its crowm up three or four hundred feet into 
the sun ; or by which a slow-crawling, shaggy 
caterpillar becomes a swift-winged, gorgeous 
butterfly; or by which a dainty, fragile egg 
becomes a beautiful songbird: for all the 
silken, bejeweled wings of that butterfly were 

[59] 



THE ATTRACTIONS OF THE MINISTRY 

packed away in that repulsive caterpillar, and 
all the sweet music of that songster was sleep- 
ing in that plain shell. Just to watch such a 
process is one of the most interesting things 
in nature. 

Even more wonderful is the process by 
which the human mind unfolds from uncon- 
scious infancy, which has ^^ never thought 
that this is I, " into a mature mind and full- 
grown personality and perhaps the philoso- 
pher's intellect that enables him to weigh the 
earth and unwrap the secrets of the sun and 
sift the stars through his fingers. To watch 
this process and especially to develop and 
direct, to stimulate and inspire it, to lead and 
lure it on into new fields and wider horizons 
and loftier visions and thus to have part in 
cultivating and ripening minds into maturity 
and power is one of the highest privileges 
and purest joys of life. This is the special 
privilege and work of parents in the home 
and the teacher in the school and the preacher 
in the pulpit. 

The minister is doing this work on a large 

[60] 



SPECIFIC ATTRACTIONS OF THE MINISTRY 

scale as lie speaks to his congregation. His 
sermons and addresses cover a wide field of 
subjects and are comparable to a college or 
university course of lectures. The preacher 
addresses the same general audience year 
after year and thus is able to give them a sys- 
tematic course of instruction on the largest 
and most inspiring themes. He is often the 
chief educator in the community and more 
than any other man in it guides the thinking 
and molds the minds of his people. He im- 
parts his own mental processes, his clearness 
and candor and honesty of thought, to them 
and builds himself into their minds so that 
they often bear the common stamp of his 
method and type of thought. It is a peculiar 
pleasure he enjoys as he sees his people grow 
and advance under his teaching. No teacher 
in a school or professor in a college or uni- 
versity chair has a greater and more inspir- 
ing opportunity to educate people than has 
the preacher in his pulpit, and this privilege 
and joy is one of the attractions of his call- 
ing. 

[61] 



THE ATTRACTIONS OF THE MINISTRY 

A Speaking Vocation 
5. In the same line the ministry has the at- 
traction of being a speaking vocation. Truth 
may be imparted and minds educated through 
the printed page, and this is the work and 
joy of the author. But there is a special joy 
in imparting truth through the voice to a 
present, visible audience. Speaking is an ex- 
ercise that arouses the speaker's whole per- 
sonality — physical, mental, emotional, and 
spiritual. Under its inspiration the heart 
beats with a quicker bound, the blood rushes 
in a ruddy, glowing stream through the 
arteries and veins, and every organ and 
nerve is quickened into a keener and fuller 
life. The mind also is aroused and its men- 
tal associations come flocking around the 
theme under discussion and pour their light 
upon it, the logical faculties grow more alert 
to see relations, and thought finds readier 
and more forcible expression in speech. The 
emotions are kindled and begin to glow ana 
fuse the whole soul into fervency and fire. 
The imagination spreads its wings and soars 

[62 2 



SPECIFIC ATTRACTIONS OF THE MINISTRY 

to loftier heights where the mind can see 
with broader vision and utter more eloquent 
speech and deliver more powerful strokes of 
thought. The will arouses its energy and 
mounts into mastery and bends all thought 
and passion and speech to its own purpose. 
Speaker and audience also react on each 
other and put fuel on each other's fire. While 
the speaker magnetizes the audience, the 
audience inspires the speaker. The fire in his 
eyes kindles their souls, and their gleaming 
eyes are flaming torches to his soul. His elo- 
quence puts a kind of hypnotic spell upon 
them, and their eager faces and rapt atten- 
tion excite him to still greater efforts and 
effects. The interest and especially the pas- 
sion of speaker and audience are mutually 
contagious ; they catch and kindle each other's 
emotions. A great orator may become trans- 
figured before his audience and his face may 
shine with a supernal light, as did the face 
of Moses. Of Daniel Webster it is recorded 
that for several hours after his great oration 
at the dedication of Bunker Hill Monument 

[ 63 ] 



THE ATTRACTIONS OF THE MINISTRY 

his face wore an indescribably grand expres- 
sion that awed those who came into his pres- 
ence. 

The orator thus rises to heights of thought 
and emotion that he never could attain in the 
calmness and coolness of private study and 
meditation. By a process of electric induc- 
tion the audience charges him with power by 
which his total soul down to its unconscious 
deeps is aroused into action and he tran- 
scends his ordinary ability and may be a 
revelation and wonder to himself. 

Such an experience is one of the greatest 
triumphs and joys of the human soul. The 
whole soul is then alive and alert in all its 
powers of thought and passion and pours 
forth its total self in a flood of spontaneity 
and abandon as a bird discharges its soul in 
a gush of song. All disharmony in the soul 
is unified, all distracting and troublous 
thoughts and feelings are submerged, and the 
soul loses itself in perfect expression and 
pure joy. This is probably the highest state 
of the human soul and it is only approached 

[641 



SPECIFIC ATTRACTIOXS OF THE MINISTRY 

by the great artist in the act of giving birth 
to some child of his genius. 

Now the minister's work is in this field. 
He is a speaker, and two or three times a 
week he stands before an audience and speaks 
to them face to face and soul to soul. His 
audience is one of intelligence, and it is in- 
terested in his subject and has some general 
acquaintance with it. It understands his gen- 
eral line of reasoning and his personal pur- 
pose, and it is quick to appreciate his good 
points, and is also able and keen to note his 
defects. His audience is s^nrnpathetic, it usu- 
ally is en rapport with him and wants and 
waits to be instructed and stirred to action. 
It waits for him as an instrument waits for 
the musician to sweep its keys or strings. 

On the whole. Christian people furnish the 
best average audience that could be gathered 
in its community. The preacher has his 
chance with it, and if he has any spark of 
the oratoric instinct he will catch and hold 
its attention and kindle its interest. He 
may not be a great orator such as Beecher 

[65] 



THE ATTRACTIONS OF THE MINISTRY 

or Spurgeon, for such men of genius are 
as rare in the pulpit as they are in any 
other field; but he has some ability as a 
speaker and he has about the best opportu- 
nity that any man can have to cultivate the 
art of speaking and achieve efficiency if not 
mastery in it. "With themes appealing to 
human souls on the greatest issues of time 
and eternity, he can arouse himself to his 
fullest power and fervency and he can arouse 
his hearers to some realization of the mighty 
motives that should move them to Christian 
faith and action. This privilege is a joy com- 
pared with which many of the pleasures for 
which other men pay dearly are not worthy 
to be considered, and this will ever be one of 
the highest attractions of the ministry. 

A SouL-Wi:N^isri]^G Vocation- 

6. The ministry has the attraction of being 
a soul-winning vocation. Personal interest 
in a work makes it a delight, and its absence 
kills enjoyment and turns work into drudg- 
ery. The mere artisan may be set to tread 

[GG] 



SPECIFIC ATTRACTIONS OF THE MINISTRY 

the round of some mechanical routine in 
which he can have little or no interest, but 
the artist has an ideal that sets his soul on 
fire and kindles his intense interest and en- 
thusiasm. The physician in a considerable 
degree has this interest in treating a patient, 
and the attorney in conducting a case. The 
lawyer in addressing a jury is trying not sim- 
ply to make a fine speech and gain applause, 
but to persuade them of the truth and jus- 
tice of his case ; and he may have the tremen- 
dous incentive of trying to save his client's 
life. 

The minister has this motive of personal 
interest and responsibility in the highest de- 
gree. He, too, is trying to win a case and 
heal a patient and save a soul. His aim is 
the practical one of persuading his hearers 
of their lost condition in sin and need of a 
Saviour and of convincing them that Jesus 
Christ is mighty to save. This practical and 
immensely responsible aim shapes the logic 
of his sermon and suffuses it with fervency 
and urgency from beginning to end. He is 

[67] 



THE ATTRACTIONS OF THE MINISTRY 

not rendering a performance before his hear- 
ers for their entertainment or even for their 
instruction, but he is at close grips with them 
in a personal contest in which he is endeavor- 
ing by every means in his power to enlighten 
their minds, remove their difficulties and 
doubts, conquer their prejudices, break up 
their indifference, break down their opposi- 
tion, and melt and move them to faith and 
action. When he succeeds in his endeavor 
and knows that he has led souls to Christ, he 
has a sense of holy satisfaction and even of 
triumph which is like that of the physician 
who has delivered a patient from death, or 
of a lawyer who has secured justice for his 
client or has even saved his life. 

The minister is engaged in saving souls not 
only in his preaching but also in his more pri- 
vate, personal relations with his people. Je- 
sus not only preached to great multitudes 
that thronged the amphitheater of the sea- 
shore or the mountain side, but he also en- 
gaged in private interviews with solitary in- 
dividuals, such as Nicodemus, who came to 

[68] 



SPECIFIC ATTRACTIONS OF THE MINISTRY 

him alone by night, or the woman with whom 
he talked at Jacob's w^ell. With him a single 
soul was a great audience. We do not read 
of anyone 's being converted by his public ser- 
mons, but in these personal interviews he won 
his individual hearer every time. The min- 
ister is carrying on this private work, as he 
gets into close, sympathetic touch with indi- 
viduals and by his personal influence and 
tactful, tender words leads them to Christ. 
This personal work is often the most effective 
means of gathering souls into the Kingdom; 
and such converts are usually the most stable, 
as hand-picked apples are always the best. 

The minister's office also includes the work 
of guiding and developing his people in their 
growth in Christian character and conduct; 
and in sustaining and comforting them in all 
the circumstances, temptations, trials, and 
sorrows of life. This brings him into the 
most intimate, confidential relations with 
them in both their joys and their sorrows 
and binds them to his heart with the strong- 
est and most tender ties. As '^friendship is 

[69] 



THE ATTRACTIONS OF THE MINISTRY 

three fourths of life," the minister has op- 
portunities enjoyed by few other men of 
forming precious friendships that are among 
his greatest treasures and richest joys. 

There is a peculiar joy in winning and help- 
ing souls that rises far above the mere satis- 
faction of success in one's work. It was for 
this joy that was set before him that Jesus 
^^ endured the cross, despising shame"; and 
his ministers in following him may go forth 
with weeping, sowing precious seed, but they 
also shall return with rejoicing, bringing 
their sheaves with them. He that is wise 
winneth souls, and they that turn many to 
righteousness shall shine ^^as the stars for 
ever and ever." Such joy should surpass 
that of the artist in carving marble or paint- 
ing pictures, for the minister is an artist and 
creator working in the imperishable material 
of the human soul. 

BuiLDixG A Brotherhood 



7. The ministry has the attraction of being 
: of 1 

[70] 



engaged in the work of building the brother 



SPECIFIC ATTRACTIONS OF THE MINISTRY 

hood of the Christian Church. Conversion 
is only the first step in salvation, which 
covers the whole growth and fruitage of the 
Christian life. And so the minister is not 
done with converts when he has preached 
them through the door of conversion into the 
Church; rather his work has only begun. He 
is to build them up in salvation and service 
into a fuU-gro^vn Christian life ; and he is to 
build them together into the brotherhood of 
the Church. Building the Church was a 
fundamental fact in the teaching and purpose 
of Jesus. ^^I will build my church," he de- 
clared. Paul was constantly insisting on 
building believers into a temple and into the 
body of Christ and into brotherhood. All the 
saints are to be ^^ fitly framed together" as 
polished stones which thus grow ^^into a holy 
temple in the Lord; in whom ye also are 
builded together for a habitation of God in 
the Spirit." ^^Seek that ye may abound in 
the work of building up." ^^ Brethren" is a 
common title with which Paul addresses be- 
lievers. ^'Love the brotherhood" is the ad- 



THE ATTRACTIONS OF THE MINISTRY 

monition of Peter, and the brotherhood of 
believers in Christ is the central fact in the 
New Testament idea of the Church. 

The minister is the architect and master 
builder in this work. He supplies the plans 
and specifications out of the Word of God 
and the perfect Pattern in the person of the 
Lord Jesus, and he is to guide and inspire 
his people so as to eliminate divided plans 
and purposes, waste and friction, and fit his 
people together with close joints and cement 
them into solid union with love, and thus 
build them into unity and brotherhood, a tem- 
ple of the Holy Spirit full of truth and light. 

One of the dangers of the pulpit is that the 
minister may think that his main business 
and the measure of his success is just to 
preach striking and brilliant sermons and 
draw an audience. He is apt to measure him- 
self and be measured by others by the size 
of his crowd. He is then tempted to count 
his hearers instead of considering their 
Christian character and spirit. This is a fal- 
lacious standard and a false aim. ^^An audi- 

[72] 



SPECIFIC ATTRACTIONS OF THE MLMSTRY 

ence," says Dr. Charles E. Jefferson, in his 
book on ^'The Building of the Church," ^4s 
not worth working for. An audience is a set 
of unrelated people drawn together by a 
short-lived attraction, an agglomeration of 
individuals finding themselves together for a 
brief time. It is a fortuitous concourse of 
human atoms, scattering as soon as a certain 
performance is ended. It is a pile of leaves 
to be blown away by the wind, a handful of 
sand lacking consistency and cohesion, a num- 
ber of human filings drawn into position by 
a pulpit magnet, and which will drop away 
as soon as the magnet is removed. An audi- 
ence is a crowd, a church is a family." A 
crowd can make an audience, but only Chris- 
tians can make a church. Jesus did not care 
for crowds and rather avoided them, and 
there is no record that when he preached to 
crowds he got a single soul, but wlion ho 
talked with Nicodemus or with the woman of 
Samaria he got that one. lie was not seek- 
in.i< to attract a throng, but was building a 
brotherhood. 

[73] 



THE ATTRACTIONS OF THE MINISTRY 

If the minister should think of his church 
as a brotherhood, it is equally important that 
the church also should think of itself under 
this concept. Very suggestive and subtle is 
the influence of a name as it insinuates its 
meaning into the consciousness of those who 
use it. If a church thinks of itself as the 
wealthiest and most important church in the 
town or city it may next think of itself as a 
social club and then it will insensibly be based 
upon and governed by the artificial distinc- 
tions and conventional rules of a social club. 
It will then have doors constructed of wire 
netting that will sift out its members and let 
in only those that belong to its social class, 
and when others get in through the wixes they 
will be made to feel in subtle ways or be told 
in brusque terms that they are not wanted; 
and very likely it will have members that do 
not know one another and do not want to, 
and other members that do know one another 
and are sorry that they do. But if a church 
thinks of itself as a brotherhood and really 
cherishes this idea, the caste spirit will bo 

[74] 



SPECIFIC ATTRACTIONS OF THE MINISTRY 

cleared out of its consciousness and it will 
grow toward this ideal. 

Now it is the business of the minister to 
set up this ideal and strive to realize it. To 
knit his congregation into a family, to build 
his church with all its open or hidden fac- 
tions and social distinctions and childish 
alienations and petty meannesses into a 
brotherhood of mutual unselfishness and har- 
mony and love, is a hard task, calling for 
infinite tact and patience and love, but it is 
the true mission and measure of a minister. 
If he is simply delivering brilliant sermons 
and attracting crowds he may flatter himself 
and be flattered by his members as a great 
preacher, but he may be only sounding brass 
and a tinkling cymbal and may be really only 
playing an actor's part and be guilty of folly. 
He is a great preacher who can attract large 
numbers of people to Christ and make them 
brothers in him. To stand in the center of 
a congregation and knit it into fine and strong- 
brotherhood by filaments that are spun from 
his own soul, and vitalize it by arteries that 

[ '5 ] 



THE ATTRACTIONS OF THE MINISTRY 

run from his own heart is the true work and 
the rare privilege of a minister, and it is one 
of the great attractions of his calling. 

The Salvation of Society 

8. The ministry has the attraction of being 
a much broader work than the salvation of 
the individual soul and building the individ- 
ual church: it w^idens beyond the church 
walls into the salvation of society. The indi- 
vidual is the unit of society, and personal sal- 
vation is the primary work of the minister. 
All life starts with a cell, and the soul is the 
cell of society and of the world. But life also 
builds its cells into an organism and out of 
the organism generates cells. The two as- 
pects of salvation, the individual and the 
social, are never to be put into competition, 
as though either were antagonistic to the 
other. The two are complementary and must 
go together as must the center and the circle, 
the seed and the fruit, the leaven and the 
whole lump. The minister, while placing the 
center of his circle in the individual soul, also 

[76] 



SPECIFIC ATTRACTIONS OF THE MINISTRY 

from this center sweeps the whole horizon 
and encircles the globe. He is not simply 
saving individual units but organized units, 
he is building the Kingdom of God in the 
world. 

Formerly the Church was too individual- 
istic and self-contained, largely shut up 
within its o\vti walls and saving its owti mem- 
bers and children, conserving its orthodoxy 
and respectability, with little conscience or 
consciousness as to the great world with all 
its social problems and perils surging around 
its doors. 

Jesus, while he preached and applied an 
individualistic gospel, as to Nicodemus and 
the woman of Samaria, also preached and 
applied a broadly social gospel. He was 
transfigured on the mountain until he was 
steeped in splendor and the disciples were 
entranced and wanted to stay. But that was 
no place to stay. Jesus quickly hurried down 
to the plain where was a poor demoniac boy 
to be healed and many troubled folk to be 
helped and much work to be done. He turned 

[77] 



THE ATTRACTIONS OF THE MINISTRY 

that great white splendor on the mountain 
top, that was not for the private delectation 
of his disciples or for his own exaltation, into 
a shining stream of mercy to heal and bless 
the social world, even as mountains transmute 
the great glaciers and dazzling snowdrifts on 
their summits into rivulets and rivers that 
sow wheat fields and orchards out over the 
plain and make them blossom as the rose. 

Jesus applied his principles and spirit to 
all the social problems of his day : to politics 
and taxes, poverty and wealth, to employer 
and employee, to strikes and lockouts, to pub- 
lic and private morals. The parable of the 
Good Samaritan is the social gospel and so 
is The Lord's Prayer and the Sermon on the 
Mount. The whole Bible, from Genesis to 
Eevelation, is full of the social gospel. The 
prophets were great preachers of it and dealt 
with the very same problems in Judea that 
we have to-day in America and Europe. 

The minister of to-day is called to the same 
work in his community, and this field is now 
opening out before him in many ways. He 

[78] 



SPECIFIC ATTRACTIONS OF THE MINISTRY 

no longer stands in his pulpit i)reacliing a 
denominational theology and self -regarding 
message to his people: he is a minister or 
servant of the community and his pulpit is 
only a vantage ground and point of outlook 
whence he surveys the whole social complex, 
and mystic chords connect him like sensitive 
feelers and vital nerves w^ith every aspect 
and problem and peril of this field. He sees 
whether the young people in his community 
have adequate and proper places and means 
of social recreation and companionship; 
whether there are dens of iniquity with their 
bottom in hell that are luring them to danger 
and destruction ; whether the streets are sani- 
tary, and the jails decent, and the schools well 
housed and equipped with proper appliances 
and competent teachers, and the hospitals in 
good condition and amply sustained. Of 
course he is not only on friendly terms but 
in active cooperation with all other Christian 
churches. He is a friend and helper of the 
Y. M. C. A. and the Y. W. C. A. and the Sal- 
vation Army and of every worthy means of 

[70] 



THE ATTRACTIONS OF THE MINISTRY 

social welfare. He may found and build a 
community house or club or public library or 
men's or boys' organization that will be a 
new center of social life in the community. 
Many a minister has thus revolutionized his 
town and neighborhood. He knows the police- 
man on his beat and the letter carrier on his 
route. He is hand in hand with business men 
on the one side and equally so with laboring 
men on the other, having the confidence and 
good will of both and seeking in every prac- 
tical way to mediate between these classes 
and to secure and maintain mutual justice 
and brotherhood among them. He is a citi- 
zen as well as a minister, interested in politics 
without being a partisan and preaching its 
essential principles and duties. Without 
being an offensive agitator he is yet in the 
foreground or at least in the background of 
every work and movement of reform in his 
community. At times he may boldly attack 
social evils in low or in high places and drive 
men out of iniquitous business as Jesus drove 
the thieves and robbers out of the Temple. 

[80] 



SPECIFIC ATTRACTIONS OF THE MINISTRY 



Perhaps lie must even take his ministerial 
life in his hands and be crucified on a cross 
as the price of his devotion to civic duty. He 
is to be preeminently the salt and the light 
of his community, a living gospel bound ufj 
in flesh and blood, read and known of all men. 

The minister is no longer an isolated and 
peculiar man, shut up within his own narrow 
calling or monkish cell, separated and aloof 
from his fellow men by his clerical garb and 
odor of sanctity, but he is emphatically a man 
among men, a man's man, being all things to 
all men, bone of their bone and flesh of their 
flesh, an altogether human being of good fel- 
lowship and humor, sweetness and light, bind- 
ing himself by ties of kindly interest and sym- 
pathy to everyone in his community of what- 
ever class or condition and endeavoring to 
lead all into the common life of the Kingdom 
of God. 

John saw the golden city coming do\vn out 
of heaven to earth with its twelve gates, open 
on every side day and night, opening inward 
to the vision and fellowship of the gloriflod 

[SI] 



THE ATTRACTIONS OF THE MINISTRY 

Christ and then swinging outward into paths 
of service that run in every direction to the 
ends of the earth. We have been thinking 
too exclusively of that city as being located 
in the glory land above ; but we are also build- 
ing a copy of it down on this earth. Already 
its jeweled walls and gates are rising around 
our horizon and we are laying its golden 
pavements right under our feet. This is the 
meaning of all worship and work, sanitation, 
education, social and civic reform, home mis- 
sions and foreign missions, national and in- 
ternational affairs. This is the minister's 
mission and program, and no grander call 
and opportunity now appeals to men. It 
should draw young men with a great attrac- 
tion. 

ESTABLISHII^G THE Ki:srGDOM OF GoD IN THE 
WOELD 

9. There is a still wider attraction at this 
point. The writer has already referred to 
foreign missions, and this work opens our 
vision into the Kingdom of God as it sweeps 

[82] 



J 



SPECIFIC ATTRACTIONS OF THE MINISTRY 

its horizon beyond our local community out 
across the country and continent around the 
world. The minister is committed to this 
work also. His pulpit can be no local and 
cramped field and opportunity, but it is as 
big as the globe, and he is a true cosmopolite, 
a citizen of the world. The little arc of his 
pulpit, after all, is a great circle and runs 
around the equator. He is just as near to 
the center of the earth and to the stars, stand- 
ing in his pulpit, however obscure it may be, 
as he would be if he were in a conspicuous 
pulpit in New York or London. He is thus 
a man of planetary proportions and power. 
He is helping to shape the moral and polit- 
ical, educational and social, and the religious 
and spiritual life of the country ; and through 
the agencies of foreign missions he is reach- 
ing his hands around the globe and helping 
to lift and roll it into the light and love of 
God. The touch of his hand and the thrill of 
his voice really reach every human being on 
the earth : for humanity is one web or a vital, 
sensitive organism, so that whatever touches 

[83] 



THE ATTRACTIONS OF THE MINISTRY 

it at one point is propagated through the 
whole vast body. No other man is handling 
such a big business as the minister. We are 
always impressed with the statement that the 
sun never sets on the British Empire; yet 
this empire is only a few red patches on the 
map, while the Kingdom of God encircles the 
globe around the equator and from pole to 
pole, and the Christian minister is ever pre- 
senting this business to his people and in- 
structing and inspiring them in it. He is in 
touch with the geography of all continents 
and islands; he knows something of their 
lands and languages, races and customs, gov- 
ernments and religions. His brain is a tele- 
graphic or telephonic exchange where mes- 
sages arrive from and go out to all the earth. 
He has a vision of a world redeemed and 
unified in common brotherhood, peace, and 
prosperity. He is laboring to build the true 
League of Nations, which will never be real- 
ized as the prophets foresaw it and the poets 
dreamed it as ^^the Parliament of man, the 
Federation of the world" until it comes un- 

[81] 



m 



SPECIFIC ATTRACTIONS OF THE MINISTRY 

der the rule of Him whose right it is to reign, 
and the kingdoms of this world ' ' become the 
kingdom of our Lord, and of his Christ." 
This inspiring, world-wide work is a splendid 
attraction of the ministry, and young men of 
vision and courage should leap to its call and 
opportunity. 

Leadership 
10. At this point the writer wishes to em- 
phasize specially as one of the attractions of 
the ministry the fact of its leadership. Lead- 
ership is one of the most powerful magnets 
that attract men in all fields. In science, lit- 
erature, and art, and especially in business, 
government, and war, men aspire to rise to 
positions where they are intrusted with great 
responsibilities and command or lead others. 
In every city and village men are measured 
by public opinion very much by the degree 
of prominence and leadership which they at- 
tain; and as a rough, external standard the 
measurement is approximately correct. It is 
also a true, human instinct which prompts 
men to aspire to and to appreciate and re- 

[85] 



THE ATTRACTIONS OF THE MINISTRY 

joice in such leadership, provided it is not 
unworthily gained and used. 

The minister steps almost at once into such 
a position, and if he proves competent and 
worthy he grows in it until very often he be- 
comes the most influential man in his com- 
munity or even in a large city. He is a leader 
of his people in thought, as he molds them 
into his way of thinking and often guides 
them to his own conclusions. He is a leader 
in planning and carrying out all the activi- 
ties of his church. He is a leader in the life 
of his community, as he holds up civic and 
ethical and religious ideals and builds them 
into its social structure. He is a leader in 
great crises of thought and life when momen- 
tous questions of faith or government or na- 
tional aifairs or war come up for practical 
decision. And he is a leader in the broad field 
of the nation and the world, as he shapes pro- 
grams and pushes campaigns in home and 
foreign missionary work. No business man 
or la^\yer or civic officer or statesman is 
handling plans and programs of more far- 

[S6] 



SPECIFIC ATTRACTIONS OF THE MINISTRY 

reaching scope and influence, no other man in 
the ordinary places of life has such lines of 
leadership committed to his hands. The min- 
ister comes to feel the dignity and honor and 
the magnitude and significance of the inter- 
ests he is guiding, and this position of re- 
sponsibility and leadership is a worthy at- 
traction of his calling. 

Heeoism 

11. In the same line the ministry has the 
attraction of heroism. Men crave the adven- 
turous, they hunger for the heroic. A life of 
undisturbed security and ease and pleasure 
soon loses its relish and then palls upon and 
satiates all the senses. An American mil- 
lionaire, recently deceased, once made a pa- 
thetic plaint. He was never destined to be 
quite happy, he said, because his inherited 
wealth destroyed the necessity for and in- 
centive to action and killed ambition. From 
such a life men will break away and answer 
the call of the wild that they may rough it in 
the forest or wilderness or on the sea, or that 

[87] 



THE ATTRACTIONS OF THE MINISTRY 

they may climb the most dangerous moun- 
tain tops or conquer the icy caps of the globe. 
Men cannot stand it to be coddled in comfort ; 
they instinctively and imperiously crave ad- 
venture and danger, fortitude and valor. One 
of the attractions of war is the very re- 
lief from the security and comforts of 
peace which it brings and the tremendous 
hazards and splendid heroism with which it 
abounds. 

The ministry, far from being immune from 
hardship and swathed in comfort, as some 
people may think it is and as some ministers 
may even try to make it, is really a heroic 
calling. It ordinarily has enough physical 
trials to call for some grit as well as grace. 
It demands great patience and courage in 
dealing with many of its problems, especially 
as they are rendered complicated and vexa- 
tious by the irritation and opposition of 
petty-minded and unreasonable people that 
so pestered Paul and have not yet learned to 
leave the preacher alone. The minister's 
very program calls for heroism. It is often 

[88] 



SPECIFIC ATTRACTIO-XS OF THE MLMSTRY 

an arduous and adventurous one as he tries 
to build up a divided, visionless church into 
unity and service, or tries to reform and 
transform a back^vard conmiunity or city. 
His progi'am looks impossible when he puts 
it up against the terribly disjointed, sin- 
stricken world. But the impossible is our 
challenge and opportunity, an occasion to 
measure ourselves with splendid insolence 
and defiant audacity against every opposing 
force. It may inspire us with such faith and 
bravery and resolution as are the highest 
heroism. Jesus Christ was the most superbly 
heroic figure of all the ages, as he faced sol- 
diers at the Garden gate so calmly and ma- 
jestically that they went back^vard and fell 
upon the gi'ound, and then with equal calm- 
ness and courage went to his cross and then 
dared to close and crown all his teaching with 
the sublime declaration: ^^AU authority hath 
been given unto me in heaven and on earth. 
Go ye therefore, and make disciples of all the 
nations, baptizing them into the name of the 
Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit : 

[89] 



THE ATTRACTIONS OF THE MINISTRY 

teaching them to do all things whatsoever I 
commanded you: and lo, I am with you al- 
ways, even unto the end of the world/ ^ 

Paul followed in the same path of heroism 
when he stepped from Asia to Europe and 
dared to preach the gospel of the resurrec- 
tion in skeptical Athens, and then was not 
ashamed to preach it in Rome also, for it was 
everywhere the power of God unto salvation. 
Martyrs caught up the same torch of the light 
of the world and carried it forward. 

"A noble arm}^, men and boys, 
The matron and the maid, 
Around the Saviour's throne rejoice, 

In robes of light arrayed: 
They climbed the steep ascent of heaven 

Through peril, toil, and pain: 
God, to us may grace be given 
To follow in their train/' 

Seizing the same banner of the gospel, the 
minister dares to set his feet undaunted in 
the same perilous path, follow the same im- 
possible program and go with Christ toward 
the same vision and victory that overcometh 
the world. Jesus came to bring, not peace, 

[90] 



SPECIFIC ATTRACTIONS OF THE MINISTRY 

but a sword, and wherever he has gone there 
has been a fight; a fight against slavery, 
against the degradation of woman, against 
the liquor traffic, against all the hosts of 
wickedness, and the Christian ministry will 
be a war to the end. In such a campaign the 
minister will never have reason to complain 
that he lacks the incentive of adventure and 
heroic bravery, for he will ever be called upon 
to fight the good fight of faith and carry the 
cross while he wins the crown. 

A Great Fij^lowship 

12. The ministry has the attraction of a 
great fellowship. Every vocation has the fel- 
lowship of those engaged in it, and this is a 
strong. bond of union and means of encour- 
agement and may be a source of great honor 
and pride. Laboring men have their unions 
and are generally loyal to them and often 
glory in them. Business men, la^\yers, phy- 
sicians, scientists, educators, all have their 
associations by which they promote their 
mutual interests and advance their objectives. 

[91] 



THE ATTRACTIONS OF THE MINISTRY 

The Christian minister belongs to one of the 
oldest and most honorable associations in the 
world. It dates back to Hebrew prophets and 
to Christ and his disciples and has come down 
through apostles, martyrs, missionaries, re- 
formers, theologians, and preachers, who 
have helped to shape the Christian centuries ; 
and it stands to-day as one of the strongest 
organizations and finest fellowships among 
men. 

It is true that the ministry has its share of 
unworthy members who have cast discredit 
and even dishonor on their calling, but this 
fact has not lowered its essential nature and 
level. There are dishonorable members in 
every profession, black sheep in every flock. 
But as a class, ministers stand high in the 
estimation of the world, and of their calling 
they may be justly proud. 

And now, if men gather strength and in- 
spiration from their membership in a labor 
union or in a professional association, if they 
thrill with pride in their membership in the 
Grand Army of the Eepublic and glory in the 

[92] 



SPECIFIC ATTRACTIONS OF THE MINISTRY 

American Legion, shall not tlie minister swell 
with some sense of pride as he realizes his 
membership in the noble army of those who 
through all the ages have proclaimed the gos- 
pel of the Son of God and have fought the 
good fight of faith against spiritual hosts of 
wickedness? The minister enjoys a rare 
privilege in the fellowship of his brethren, 
for they are men of pure hearts and purposes 
and of optimistic faith and good cheer, who 
probably have a happier time together than 
any other class of men ; and he also feels the 
mystic ties that bind him to all the men 
through all the ages of the spiritual fellow- 
ship to which he belongs, so that he can re- 
peat, with a fullness of meaning that few men 
can appreciate, the worn but wonderful 
words, ^^I believe in the holy Catholic 
Church; the communion of saints." Every 
minister in a measure is uplifted and 
strengthened and inspired and made a more 
honorable and a greater man by this fellow- 
ship, and this is one of the attractions of his 
calling. 

[93] 



THE ATTRACTIONS OF THE MINISTRY 

COWOEKIXG WITH GoD AND ChRIST 

13. But the ministry has the attraction of 
an infinitely greater fellowship : the minister 
is a coworker with God and a fellow worker 
with Christ. ' ' We are God's fellow-workers, ' ' 
said Paul; and Jesus said, ^^My Father work- 
eth even until now, and I work,'' meaning 
that God is ever at work. Medieval artists 
painted God as resting at ease on a gorgeous 
couch amidst golden clouds, and we have not 
yet gotten altogether rid of the impression 
that God, ha\ing finished his creation, has 
nothing to do. Work is an unpleasant sug- 
gestion to us and we think that it must be a 
degradation to God. But God is a laborer 
now as much as he was in the beginning. The 
heavens are still his mighty workshop in 
which suns are flying off the anvil of his crea- 
tion like sparks of fire. And he is equally 
still at work in the human world, indwelling 
in the minds of men, immanent in all human 
history and activities and working out his 
eternal plan and purpose. So also Christ is 
still working in the world through his Spirit 

[94] 



1 



SPECIFIC ATTRACTIONS OF THE MINISTRY 



and disciples and Church and all the channels 
and agencies of providence as he is building 
his Kingdom among men. All men live and 
move and have their being in the immanent 
God, who is present and active in every opera- 
tion of nature and event of our human world. 
The minister in a special sense is cowork- 
ing with God and Christ in the service of 
preaching the gospel and building the King- 
dom of heaven in the hearts of men. His 
mission has been planned and his message 
shaped for him in the divine mind, and in a 
sense he is the voice of God speaking to men, 
and the hands and feet of Christ doing his 
work among men; doing not only the same, 
but greater works than Jesus himself did, 
because he lives in a greater world, more 
unified and open and responsive to the gos- 
pel message. The minister is the ambassador 
of God, as though God did beseech men 
through him, however imperfectly and un- 
worthily he may fulfill this office. The 
preacher is a prophet of God, the divinely 
appointed successor of the ancient Hebrew 

[95] 



THE ATTRACTIONS OF THE MINISTRY 

prophets and Christian apostles, who stands 
in Christ's place and speaks in God's name. 
He sees all things in a divine light and applies 
eternal principles to temporal conditions. 
The prophet has ever been the foremost and 
most important man in the world, standing 
above the world and judging righteous judg- 
ment based upon eternal standards and ex- 
alting inner worth above outer wealth and 
the spirit above the flesh, and the Christian 
minister is the prophet of to-day. He stands 
with his hands joined to God's hands and is 
a fellow laborer with him in all his work. It 
is because of this divine partnership that the 
minister knows that the gospel is the dyna- 
mite of God unto salvation. Sin can never 
be cleansed from human souls by sociology 
or science, education or art, however valuable 
these and other like human agencies may be 
as aids in this work. Only the Spirit of God 
can eradicate this terrible malady. The min- 
ister has the assurance that God in Christ is 
working with him to give saving efficacy to 
the truth he preaches. The very idea of such 

[96] 



SPECIFIC ATTRACTIONS OF THE MINISTRY 

a gigantic task as the redemption of this 
world staggering under all its weight of sin 
and woe would overwhelm and crush him 
were it not for his faith that it is God's work 
and he will carry it through. If God be with 
the minister, who can be against him? No 
other man in a greater or possibly in an equal 
degree has this supreme assurance and at- 
traction in his life work. 

Great and Fine Eewards 

14. Finally, the ministry has the attraction 
of great and fine rewards. There are two 
kinds of reward in life, external and inter- 
nal. External rewards, such as wages and 
wealth, are the end — ^product and remunera- 
tion of service and stand apart from the 
service itself. Men are usually most eager 
for these material rewards, and the division 
of them is one of the great causes of com- 
petition and strife among them. The min- 
ister receives a modest share of these mate- 
rial goods. 

But there is another kind of reward that 

[97] 



THE ATTRACTIONS OF THE MINISTRY 

is much richer and nobler. This is the in- 
herent reward that grows right out of the 
service itself. Work which is congenial and 
delightful is its own reward. This is emi- 
nently true of artistic work. The sculptor's 
chisel and the painter's brush, the poet's 
flights of imagination and the musician's 
song — these forms of activity may be intense 
toil and cost sweat and even the agony of the 
soul, but they are also the soul's finest satis- 
faction and fullest joy. These activities are 
not weights that load and drag the soul down 
into slavery, but wings that set it free in 
glorious liberty. Such work is not drudgery 
but delight, and in such service duty and de- 
sire coincide and make one music. These in- 
herent joys are ever the highest and richest 
rewards of service. 

All men, even those that are primarily 
working for external, material rewards, may 
in some degree attain to this reward and joy 
inherent in their work. Not only the business 
man or the professional man may have such 
interest in his work that it becomes its own 

[98] 



SPECIFIC ATTRACTIOINS OF THE MINISTRY 

satisfaction and delight, but even the com- 
mon laborer at the humblest and hardest 
physical toil may learn to love his work and 
strive to do it better for its own sake; and 
this process of humanizing the common labor 
and all the work of the world and opening the 
eyes of men so that they will see its inherent 
dignity and worth and reward is the line 
along which we must hope and work for the 
improvement of the condition and the con- 
tentment of the industrial toilers. 

Now the minister is engaged in work that 
carries its reward in its own bosom. All the 
attractions of the ministry that have been 
considered, with the single exception of the 
salary, are of this nature. Its social position 
and intellectual life and teaching and speak- 
ing activities and soul-winning and building 
the brotherhood of the Church and commu- 
nity service and establishing the world-wide 
Kingdom and its leadership and heroism and 
coworking with God and Christ, are rewards 
and joys in themselves. They pay their own 
way at every step. The minister does not 

[99] 



THE ATTRACTIONS OF THE MINISTRY 

need to wait till the end of the day's work 
or of the month's service to receive his real 
pay: his work is his wage. In a supreme 
degree he has the wage and joy ^^of going 
on." Like the artist working in marble or 
paint or poetry or music he is carving souls 
and painting portraits of human character 
and expressing the poetry of life and help- 
ing to set 

^^This inharmonious world in tune and cause 
' Our jarring lives to grow to mellow music.'' 

His soul takes flight on these wings and 
rises above drudgery into liberty. Often his 
duty and his desire and his delight coincide 
and flow in one smooth channel ; he does just 
what he wants to do and he wants to do just 
what he ought to do, and this is life without 
friction or fret and is the glorious liberty of 
the sons of God. 

Of course this ideal is not always or con- 
stantly realized. The minister, like other 
men, has his days of disillusionment and dis- 
couragement bordering at times on despair; 
many are his trials ; but through them all and 

[100] 



SPECIFIC ATTRACTIONS OF THE MliMSTUY 

in spite of them all he is living the life he has 
cliosen and would choose above any other life, 
and is ordinarily happy in it and at times 
rises into the victorious life. He realizes in 
a peculiar degree the gospel of cheer and the 
promises of blessing that he preaches, and 
would not exchange the grace of God in his 
calling for all the gold in the world. 

The great preachers have gloried in the 
rewards of the ministry and in its very trials 
and crosses. The Hebrew prophets were men 
of great disappointments and sorrows, but 
they caught golden visions and lived lives of 
triumphant faith and joy. Paul rejoiced in 
his calling amidst all his unparalleled suffer- 
ings, and when the grace of God struck the 
thorn in his flesh it blazed up in glory as the 
electric current when it encounters the resist- 
ance of the filament in the lamp flashes into 
light. The supreme example of reward and 
joy in the ministry is the Master himself, 
who, notwithstanding all his sorrows, was 
anointed with the oil of gladness above his 
fellows, the happiest man and most jubilant 

[101] 



THE ATTRACTIONS OF THE MINISTRY 

optimist that ever lived; and ^^Who for the 
joy that was set before him endured the cross, 
despising shame. '^ 

The glorious company of the apostles and 
martyrs, who counted not their lives dear, 
rejoiced in their sufferings and would not 
have exchanged the martyr's flames that en- 
veloped them for purple robes or jeweled 
crowns. The minister belongs to this com- 
pany and has his share of these inherent re- 
wards and joys. He also sees of the travail 
of his soul and is satisfied. This is a reward 
that is independent of wages and position 
and all the vicissitudes of the world and is 
within his soul a well of water springing up 
into pure and fresh life. He ever carries his 
reward with him, he reaps as he sows, his 
work is his constant w^age. At the end of 
his day's work comes his final reward, when 
he can exclaim with Paul, ^ ' I have fought the 
good fight, I have finished the course, I have 
kept the faith: henceforth there is laid up 
for me the crown of righteousness, which the 
Lord, the righteous judge, shall give to me 

[102] 



SPECIFIC ATTRACTIONS OF THE MINISTRY 



at that day; and not to me only, but also to 
all them that have loved his appearing." 

These manifold and various aspects of the 
Christian ministry present only its attrac- 
tions and magnify its office, for this is our 
present purpose. No doubt other aspects can 
be presented and even painted in dark colors, 
though these have not been wholly overlooked 
in this study. The ministry is subject to the 
ordinary disappointments and trials of life 
and also has vexations and battles of its own. 
The minister's crown is attended with a 
cross, and there are plenty of thorns con- 
cealed in the roses in his garden. We have 
no disposition to deny or minimize this as- 
pect of this calling. They furnish occasions 
when the minister is to exercise his faith 
and patience and bravery and heroism, 
and without such trials and tests he could 
scarcely be a strong and virile man. The 
battle field is the correlative of the soldier's 
calling and courage, and it is so with the 
good soldier of Jesus Christ. He expects the 
march and trench and firing line and the leap 

[ 103 ] 



THE ATTRACTIONS OF THE MINISTRY 

over the top. He asks for no soft life and 
flowery beds of ease, but girds himself up for 
service and genuine sacrifice, if needs be even 
unto death. 

But when the account is cast up the at- 
tractions of the ministry overwhelmingly out- 
weigh its trials, and it makes a superb appeal 
to strong young men with faith in their hearts 
and courage in their souls to enlist in this 
service. 



[ 104 1 



IV 

SOME SUBSIDIARY QUESTIONS 



I 



b 



IV 
SOME SUBSIDIARY QUESTIONS 

SEVERAL subsidiary questions of impor- 
tance remain to be answered. 

A Call to the Ministry 

1. What constitutes a call to the ministry? 
Answers formerly given to this question 
seemed to say or to imply that the minister 
must receive a special call of a supernatural 
nature from the Lord. There is an element 
of truth in this view, but it may make a mis- 
leading impression. All men engaged in 
worthy service are called to their work by 
the Lord. God's plan extends to everyone's 
work, but each one can and must find out 
what is the Lord's will for him, not by any 
supernatural voice or sign, but by the use 
of the ordinary means for discovering the 
divine will. 

If we study the calls to enter the Lord's 

[107] 



THE ATTRACTIONS OF THE MINISTRY 

service that are recorded in the Scriptures, 
such as to Moses, Ex. 3 : 1-12 ; Bezalel, Ex. 
31 : 1-5 ; Gideon, Judg. 6 : 11-18 ; Samuel, I 
Sam. 3 : 1-14 ; David, I Sam. 16 : 11-13 ; Isaiah, 
Isa. 6 : 1-13 ; Amos, Amos 1:1; Peter and 
Andrew, James and John, Mark 1 : 16-20 ; the 
twelve disciples, Mark 3 : 13-19 ; Paul, Acts 
9 : 1-12 ; and many others, we discover that no 
two received a call in just the same way, and 
so no one need be surprised if his call is 
peculiar to himself and conforms to no other 
one's experience or even to any Scripture 
example. 

In some instances apparently accidental or 
trivial circumstances have turned young men 
into the ministry. Frederick W. Robertson 
in his youth had his heart set on the career 
of a soldier, but, an expected commission fail- 
ing to arrive, he went to Oxford University 
to study for the ministry. When the belated 
commission turned up within five days, he 
accepted the circumstance as an indication of 
the divine will, continued in his course and 
became one of the greatest preachers of his 

[108] 



SOME SUBSIDIARY QUESTIONS 

century. In other cases a quiet conviction is 
born in the soul and a young man feels he 
is called to the ministry as Wordsworth was 
called to be a poet. He was returning home 
in the early, dewy hours of a day when ' ' Mag- 
nificent the morning rose, in memorable 
pomp,'' and then, he says in the Prelude: 

My heart was full; I made no vows, but vows 
Were then made for me; bond unknown to me 
Was given, that I should be, else sinning greatly, 
A dedicated Spirit. 

Back of such a call to the ministry may be 
a mother's prayers or a father's desire, the 
memory of a sermon or some special provi- 
dence. Many are the ways in which God 
makes known his will. The wind bloweth 
where it will; so is everyone that is born 
or called of the Spirit. 

The call to the ministry is indicated by 
means, and these primarily include the Chris- 
tian experience, prayer, and the spirit of 
obedience, but they also include one's ability 
and aptitude and temperament and taste for 
the work and his opportunity for entering it. 

[109] 



THE ATTRACTIONS OF THE MINISTRY 

One may be fitted for the ministry and not 
have an opportunity of preparing for it ; and 
he may have the opportunity and not be fitted 
for it. When physical health and mental 
ability and spiritual temperament and op- 
portunity for preparation and a sense of the 
appeal of its work combine into a conviction 
of duty to enter it, such a combination and 
conviction constitute a clear call to the min- 
istry. Let no young man set up impossible 
conditions or erect unreasonable barriers to 
exclude or excuse him from this calling, but 
having a reasonable measure of ability and 
a sense of duty he should make his decision 
and commit his way to the Lord. 

Peeparatiok for the Ministry 

2. "What preparation is necessary or need- 
ful for a successful ministry? Of course it 
is assumed that the primary preparation and 
essential qualification for this service is faith 
in God and in the gospel of Christ and a 
Christian experience and spirit. But our 
question relates to the special training for 

[110] 



SOME SUBSIDIARY QUESTIONS 



this calling, and the answer to it would vary 
with different denominations and is subject 
to modifications in exceptional circumstances 
and cases. Everyone, however, entering this 
field should get the largest preparation pos- 
sible for him. This should include a regular 
college course and seminary training. These 
terms may be exacting for some, but they are 
the necessary price that must be paid for 
competency for this vocation. The standard 
of preparation has been greatly raised for 
all professions and even for mechanical 
trades, and the minister must rise in his 
equipment with this general rise in the level 
of intelligence and trained ability. The pul- 
pit calls for greater general talent and more 
thorough specialized training in our day than 
ever before. Formerly the minister was the 
most highly, if not the only, specially edu- 
cated man in the community, standing head 
and shoulders above his people and speaking 
to them in terms and tones of authority. But 
this day has passed, and now the preacher is 

only one among many, and he is speaking to 

[1111 



THE ATTRACTIONS OF THE MINISTRY 

many who stand on the same general level 
with him, and usually to a few who are his 
equals or his superiors in intellectual attain- 
ments. Even to hold his own with his peo- 
ple he must stand with them if not above 
them. The minister must be a man of uni- 
versal education and culture, knowing every- 
thing about one or a few things, and some- 
thing about everything. Without this large 
background of knowledge he may at any mo- 
ment blunder into statements disclosing some 
ignorance or bigotry on his part that will ex- 
cite the criticism or ridicule or contempt of 
his people and damage his usefulness. 

The ministry has become a much larger 
and more complex work than formerly, and 
the minister must be an organizer and ad- 
ministrator and promoter and must know 
how to handle men and people of all types 
and temperaments, and this calls for a richly 
developed personality, a full-grown man. 

The young man entering the ministry to- 
day should take time to get ready. The serv- 
ice may be short, but the preparation for it 

[112] 



J 



SOME SUBSIDIARY QUESTIONS 



must be long. The harvest may ripen in a 
day and be gathered in an hour, but through 
weeks and months it slowly absorbed juicy 
sweets and ripening influences out of the soil 
and the shower and the sun for that golden 
wheat and rosy apple. A meteor burns itself 
out in the twinkling of an eye, but through 
how many millions of invisible miles did it 
accumulate momentum for that brief flash of 
splendor! A great surgeon said that if he 
had only three minutes for a critical opera- 
tion he would take two to get ready. Jesus 
took thirty years of preparation for just 
three years of work. Young men are often 
impatient to get to work and take a short-cut 
and rush into action before they have been 
drilled into skill and efficiency. Many a min- 
ister has greatly lowered and injured, if not 
ruined, his usefulness by hurrying into the 
pulpit instead of going patiently through a 
thorough course of training. Take time and 
get ready. Pay the price of preparation. Lay 
deep foundations on which to build the struc- 
ture of after years; prepare a rich soil out 

[113] 



THE ATTRACTIONS OF THE MINISTRY 

of which good sermons can grow. Develop 
a personality of poise and power that will be 
a perennial fountain of fresh force. The 
minister, above every other man, ought to be 
a workman that needs not to be ashamed, and 
such a workman must serve a full apprentice- 
ship. 

The Special Need for Mi:n'isters To-Day 

3. A third question is. Is there any special 
need and call for ministers of superior abil- 
ity to-day? There has been for several years 
and is now in nearly all denominations and 
theological seminaries a serious decline in 
the number of candidates for the ministry. 
The reasons for this fact are various. For 
one thing, the pulpit now has more competi- 
tion even in Christian work than it had for- 
merly. Young men once went to college for 
one of the three learned professions: law, 
medicine, and the ministry. Now they go 
with many professions and technical callings 
in ^^ew, and these alluring fields draw off 
some men from the ministry; and there are 

[114] 



SOME SUBSIDIARY QUESTIONS 

also allied lines of Christian work, such as 
Y. M. C. A. secretaryships, that call for edu- 
cated men. The pulpit no longer stands out 
in solitary glory as the one place for trained 
Christian work. The meager support offered 
the ministry, the disinclination of churches 
to call, as settled pastors, ministers who are 
approaching advanced age, and the attrac- 
tions of business are other causes furthering 
this decline. 

But there are yet deeper reasons operating 
at this point, and one of these is the decline 
of the pulpit itself. The Church is not now 
everywhere the central and supreme com- 
munity institution that it once was. It has 
lost the support if not the respect of not a 
few people, even of some thoughtful and good 
people. The laboring men have come in con- 
siderable numbers to view it as a rich peo- 
ple's club, if not an avowedly capitalistic in- 
stitution. Many men have also come to look 
on it as a feminine, if not a child's, affair 
and not a man's place. To them it does not 
seem worth while. Eeligious doubt and the 

[115] 



THE ATTRACTIOXS OF THE MIMSTRY 

materialism of the age are also causes tend- 
ing to reduce the relative standing and power 
of the Church and pulpit. In view of all 
these conditions it is not surprising that 
many young men have gTowTi shy of the 
Church and the ministry. They do not want 
to board what they may suspect is an anti- 
quated and obsolete or a leaking and sinking- 
ship, when they are ambitious ''to sail be- 
yond the sunset and the baths of all the west- 
ern stars. ' ' 

On the other hand, the Church stands for 
a deep and permanent constitutional need in 
human nature and can no more be outgro^sm 
and left behind than can wheat fields and 
orchards. Eeligious doubt and faith fluctu- 
ate and the tide of faith now appears to be 
rising. The Church is being reconstructed 
in its teaching and work and spirit to meet 
the new conditions of the new age more di- 
rectly and fully. Men's Bible classes, brother- 
hoods, and other forms of men's work are 
drawing men back into the Church and mak- 
ing it a man's institution as well as an insti- 

[116] 



b 



SOME SUBSIDIARY QUESTIONS 

tution for women and children. The religious 
needs and problems and perils of the world 
are just as great and urgent to-day as ever 
and even gi^eater and more clamant. The 
world, as it still lies broken and bleeding by 
the Great War, now presents a supreme, re- 
ligious crisis and call. Never has it been so 
pUant and plastic since the Reformation, and 
possibly it can be rebuilt and reshaped by the 
men of this generation as no other genera- 
tion could have remolded it since the first cen- 
tury. It spells opportunity for the men of 
to-day. 

The pulpit appears to be rising to this op- 
portunity and is bound to regain some if not 
all of its former leadership and power. The 
able preacher and masterful leader of to-day 
has a great call and a splendid opportunity 
to fulfill the ministry of a prophet. He pro- 
claims and interprets and applies the gospel 
of Christ so as to prove it the power of God 
unto salvation. Other men have wounded 
and crushed the world with destructive 
agents of war : it is now his mission to heal 

[117] 



THE ATTRACTIONS OF THE MINISTRY 

it and restore it to peace and brotherhood by 
the grace of God. He is to rebuild the world 
into the Kingdom of God on earth. 

This is a challenge and a call to our ablest 
and choicest young men of vision and adven- 
turous, heroic spirit. No other calling can so 
appeal to them as supremely worth while in 
this great time. No young man is choosing 
a small or discredited or declining cause in 
entering the Christian ministry to-day. The 
pulpit has great days behind it, but its great- 
est days are yet to come. It is right now the 
most strategic point and platform for a man 
to occupy and make himself count for most 
in the world. There is a special call for 
strong young men in the ministry at this time. 
Young men should be glad they are alive in 
this great hour, when the plastic world is 
rounding into form and rolling through the 
shadows of the night into the better day ; and 
no other man has such an opportunity to put 
and leave the impress of his hand upon it as 
the Christian minister. 

These considerations have been presented 

[118] 



I 



SOME SUBSIDIARY QUESTIONS 

in the hope that they will attract the atten- 
tion of many of our ablest young men and be 
the means of leading them to dedicate them- 
selves to the Christian ministry. It is a glori- 
ous calling and it is crowned with a glorious 
reward both in this present world and in that 
which is to come. 



[119] 



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